Aegea

Overview

Aegea was one of the greatest cities in the history of the world, and one of the most important locations in the history of Demmazon, The Five Gifts, and the Age of Wonders. It began as an unprecedented experiment in cooperation between different peoples and eventually became a technological and magical marvel.

The city survived the Korvak War without falling to the Korvaks and became the site of some of the most important events of that war. It was also where Demmazon revealed Himself to the world, where the final battle with the Korvak leader was fought, and where Vestal Stone ultimately sacrificed himself to imprison him.

During the Age of Wonders, Aegea reached the height of its development. It was a city of immense structures reaching into the sky, flying platforms and other magical technologies, and magical protections that made life extraordinarily advanced by the standards of the rest of the world. It was regarded as a true wonder of the world.

Aegea was eventually destroyed during the conflicts surrounding the Fall of the Age of Wonders. Its ruins were subsequently submerged during the catastrophic geographical upheaval caused by Demmazon's Separation. Thousands of years later, the ruins remained beneath the sea, where the Under the Bus party eventually rediscovered them.

Founding

Aegea was founded before the revelation of Demmazon, before the Korvak War, and before the Age of Wonders. At the time, the different races generally lived apart, cooperating when necessary but often fighting over territorial disputes. The founding of Aegea brought together leaders from several of the greatest tribes of the various races to establish a city in which they could live and prosper together.

The original founding consisted of eight tribes:

• Three human tribes
• Two elven tribes
• One dwarven tribe
• One gnome tribe
• One halfling tribe

The known founding leaders included:

• Gralannan Urthadar the Laughing Hero — Human Barbarian
• Xavlannan Strifetamer — Elven Ranger
• Marnan Moonshadow — Elven Witch Doctor
• Dagarkin the Protector — Dwarven Fighter
• Theriries Lightouch Fire-Thrower — Human Witch Doctor of the Fire Clan
• Mageris of the Staves — Human, Council-Appointed Leader

The names and identities of the gnome and halfling founding leaders are not currently known.

The terminology of the period was different from that used in later ages. Wizards were known as Witch Doctors, Sorcerers as Channelers, and Clerics as Godspeakers.

The founding was an ambitious experiment, and coexistence was not always easy. Nevertheless, the settlement survived its early difficulties and eventually grew into the city that would become Aegea.

The Early Plague

Aegea's earliest years were threatened by a series of disasters. The normally fertile Aegean valley suffered unusual droughts, bringing famine to the young settlement. Wolves began terrorizing farmers and traders on the outskirts of the city.

Then came a plague.

The disease was initially treated as an illness, but its true nature was eventually revealed. Those infected could transform into werewolves. The plague was not merely a disease but a curse, and it threatened to destroy Aegea before the city had a chance to reach its potential.

The High Council sought a way to stop it. The Witch Doctors and shamans learned of a coven of evil witches far to the north who possessed a magical crystal called the Hag's Eye, which could reveal hidden knowledge. The leaders hoped that its power could help them discover a means of defeating the plague.

The struggle to save Aegea became the subject of The Quest for the Cure. The book was eventually preserved as a magical historical tome, and centuries later it remained the only known copy of that work.

The plague was ultimately defeated, and Aegea survived. The events surrounding the cure also led to the creation of The Aegisstaff, which became closely associated with the protection of Aegea. The staff could cure or prevent disease and possessed powerful preservation abilities. It protected crops against drought and plague and fostered abundant harvests in the region around the city. Its preservation magic was believed to have extended to the people living near it, contributing to the unusually long lives of Aegea's inhabitants.

Mageris of the Staves, one of Aegea's founders and its Council-Appointed Leader, was also the crafter of the Aegisstaff and eventually became its Keeper.

The Revelation of Demmazon

Centuries later, the world faced an entirely different threat.

The alien Korvaks invaded the world and brought it to the brink of destruction. Their magic was vastly more powerful than anything the peoples of the world had previously encountered.

It was during this crisis that Demmazon revealed Himself to the world.

Until that point, the existence of a higher power had been uncertain. Many gods were worshipped, but none had openly granted their followers the power of true magic. Faced with the Korvak threat, Demmazon intervened directly, granting the people the ability to wield magic.

Aegea was the place where this revelation occurred, making the city one of the defining locations in the transition from the ancient world into the magical age that followed.

Demmazon's revelation was followed by the creation of The Five Gifts, which were wielded by five great champions against the Korvaks. Among them was Vestal Stone, who would become the first paladin of Demmazon and leader of the Gift Bearers.

The Korvak War

Aegea became one of the great strongholds of the resistance to the Korvaks.

The city itself never fell to the invading Korvaks. It survived the war while becoming closely connected to some of its most important events.

The war eventually culminated in the confrontation with the Korvak leader, a being whose power was so great that even the combined Gift Bearers could not simply defeat him in combat. The Gift Bearers instead constructed a magical trap that would imprison him beyond the world.

The final battle took place at Aegea.

The Korvak leader could only be lured into the trap through the sacrifice of Vestal Stone. Vestal deliberately gave his life so that the other Gift Bearers could complete the prison. The plan succeeded, and the Korvak leader was imprisoned beyond the world for all eternity.

Vestal's death became one of the defining events in Aegea's history.

His body was placed in a secret tomb, and the White Gift was buried with him, with Vestal's soul remaining as its protector.

That tomb would remain important long after the Korvak War had ended. The White Gift eventually had to be retrieved again when the world faced the threat of Correries.

The Age of Wonders

The defeat of the Korvaks ushered in an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity. The peoples of the world now possessed true magic, and the combination of magic and technology produced the Age of Wonders.

Aegea became one of the greatest expressions of that age.

What had begun as a relatively primitive settlement became an immense city filled with magical and technological marvels. Its buildings rose to extraordinary heights, flying platforms moved through the city, and its citizens benefited from magical protections and technologies that would be almost unimaginable in later eras.

The surviving account experienced through the Adventure Machine depicts Aegea at the height of its development as a fantastical city of towering buildings, floating structures, and citizens capable of flying. The same account deliberately contrasts this city with the primitive settlement that existed at its founding.

Aegea was therefore not merely a participant in the Age of Wonders. It became one of the great symbols of what that age was capable of achieving.

The city's original purpose also remained visible in its character. Aegea had been founded as an experiment in cooperation among different peoples, and over the centuries it developed into a genuinely cosmopolitan city.

The Gifts and the Fall

Aegea remained intertwined with the history of the Gifts after the Korvak War.

Following Vestal Stone's sacrifice, the White Gift remained hidden in his tomb until it was eventually recovered when the forces opposing Correries needed its power.

Thorn Runehammer also had a later connection to Aegea's hidden history. After the conflicts surrounding Correries, Thorn concealed the Green Gift beneath the Temple to Demmazon in Aegea while publicly claiming that it had been returned to Demmazon.

The city's importance therefore continued into the final conflicts of the Age of Wonders, even as the world moved toward its destruction.

Destruction and the Separation

Aegea was eventually destroyed during the conflicts that brought about the end of the Age of Wonders.

The city's destruction was followed by the event now known as Demmazon's Separation. When Demmazon freed Himself and separated His realm from the world, the physical world was thrown into catastrophic upheaval.

Mountains collapsed while others rose. Oceans rushed into areas that had previously been dry, while other seas disappeared. Entire regions of the world were reshaped.

The ruins of Aegea were among the places overwhelmed by the changing seas.

The city therefore did not simply become an underwater ruin through ordinary flooding. Its submergence was part of the immense geographical upheaval caused by the Separation itself.

The Ruins

Thousands of years later, Aegea survived only as an underwater ruin.

The city had been vast, and locating it required the Under the Bus party to search a large area using old maps and underwater expeditions. They eventually discovered the remains of its distinctive Age of Wonders construction, including a temple dedicated to Demmazon built from an unusual white material resembling marble but possessing extraordinary hardness.

The ruins were not deserted. A tribe of Kuo-Toa had established itself among them and regarded outsiders as potential looters.

Despite the destruction and the passage of thousands of years, portions of the city remained remarkably intact. Several buildings contained large air pockets, while others had survived beneath rubble. The library was particularly enormous, with a campus larger than the Great Library at Toreon. Its central repository remained substantially intact, although much of its collection had been destroyed by water, age, plant growth, and mold.

The party's search of the ruins ultimately recovered a number of surviving works and magical materials from Aegea's library. Among the surviving material were historical works concerning the Korvak War, Demmazon, the Gifts, Pythia, and other subjects, as well as the remnants of the city's extraordinary magical scholarship.

Most importantly, the ruins preserved the connection between Aegea's earliest crisis and the later history of The Aegisstaff. The party's investigation of The Quest for the Cure and the plague that nearly destroyed Aegea became the first major clue in their search for the lost Aegisstaff.

Legacy

Aegea's importance extends far beyond the physical remains of the city.

It began as an experiment in cooperation between peoples that had previously lived apart and often fought one another. It survived an early supernatural plague that nearly destroyed it. It became the place where Demmazon revealed Himself and granted the world true magic. It survived the Korvak War and witnessed the final battle that imprisoned the Korvak leader. It became the resting place of Vestal Stone and the White Gift, and later served as a hiding place for the Green Gift.

At the height of the Age of Wonders, Aegea represented the extraordinary possibilities of magic and technology.

Its destruction and eventual submergence marked the end of that chapter of its history, but even thousands of years later its ruins remained a remarkable surviving fragment of the world that had existed before the Fall and the Separation.

For the people who rediscovered those ruins during Under the Bus, Aegea was not merely an ancient city. It was a place where many of the foundational events of their world's history had actually happened.